The Unsaid
by Lily S. Brett
Summary: One-shot. The Tenth Doctor's thoughts on what he never said and why. Please review if you like, I need and love feedback.


**One-shot of the Tenth Doctor's thoughts about his past companions and what he should, perhaps, have told them. Sorry about the sad tone – I was just feeling a bit melancholy about the Doctor. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy! Please review.**

**(I own no part of the Doctor Who universe(s) – I just wrote this piece.)**

What would have happened if, just once, he had said it? What might have happened to him if the words had made it past his throat before she was gone – before any of them had gone? What might have been?

The truth – the deepest truth – was that it might have broken him. His strength came at a high cost – hundreds of years of suffering, of letting each one go, of knowing that this word or touch was the last and that he would again be alone. He could not let that strength waver – he needed it.

Martha had left him looking him in the eyes – she was strong, so strong – but she had never needed him as she thought she did, and he had needed her as she never believed he did. More than anything, at that moment, he had needed someone. He should have told her, perhaps, that she had kept him above water when he was drowning. But if he told her than he would first have to say it to himself.

Donna had looked after him – for the first time in too long someone had looked after him when he had begun to forget that he need not always be the one doing the looking-after. And she was brilliant – as brilliant as he was, just as she was. She was extraordinary. She was not _his_ special person alone, she was special to everyone. He should have told her that. He wished that she could know what she was, how remarkable she could be. _Go on, be magnificent_, he willed her now. _Be great_.

The loss of them ached in him, for his hearts beat for all of them. Opening the door to his time machine might as well have been opening his soul and inviting them inside. And letting them out again…

The pain of centuries, and still he let them in and smiled.

_She_ had made him smile.

She had.

_Rose Tyler, you made me smile when I thought I couldn't._

Rose. His Rose. Of all the goodbyes, of all the words never said, what he had not said to her burned him the most. _She knows_, he told himself again. _She knows_.

And yet…

She had made him laugh. She, most of all, had been his friend. Friend, companion, partner, rescuer, and – well, and what, really? Whatever she had been, he had not allowed himself to acknowledge to either of them. She was more, so much more than the others, and the others he had let enter his lonely world. How had she managed to go deeper than that? What was there left of him but that?

"I love you," she had told him, unashamed. Somehow, in her goodbye, it had seemed a matter of course to say it, because of course he knew – _of course_ he did. He knew everything she knew. He knew her like her knew his own mind. And in his mind, there was light and hope and everything that kept him going on – but there was a dark place as well, where within dwelled the burning regret of his long life.

_I should have said it._

He had, in the end, given her all that he could – he had given her himself, and even that had felt not enough. Let it be enough, he thought. Let her forget that there is anyone but the man she has now. Let her forget me and love him.

She had told him on that cold beach – she had said "I love you" and in return he had given her himself.

"But the Doctor is still you," she had objected, stepping towards him. _Don't go._

"He needs you_,_" he told her. "That's very me_._"

Why not just say it? _I should have said it._

I gave her myself as best I could, he told himself now. And she gave me her love. We're even then, aren't we? We gave all we could.

And yet he knew, in his heart, that she had given more than he could bring himself to give back. He could not surrender his strength or he would break.

_I should have told her, _beat his thoughts, and he wondered if perhaps his strength was his weakness after all. _I should have told her._

_I should have told her._


End file.
